Now that 1Peter5 has decided to run the WHISPERS OF RESTORATION blogpost I referenced the other day entitled "Pope to celebrate new Mass rite at youth synod closing", those who had decided to follow the link I posted would soon have realized that the blogger meant the Novus Ordo - and not some new concoction by the Bergoglio brewmasters (I imagine the papal wing at Casa Santa Marta inhabited by the cackling witches from Macbeth). Which does not detract from any of the blogger's arguments against this abominable destroyer of the faith unleashed by St. Paul VI 50 years ago, as questionable and misleading as he chose to make his presentation... You can see why I could not just simply post it at the time I first saw it (it was past midnight, and I knew it would require a lot of clarificatory fisking because of the deliberately misleading way of presentation that the writer elected to use).
Pope to celebrate new Mass rite
at Youth Synod closing
October 17, 2018
For those just now connecting the dots…
Plenty of controversy now surrounds Pope Francis: his seemingly invalid election, his long pattern of heterodox teaching, the Viganò report implicating him in cascading sex abuse crimes, the ongoing Amoris Laetitia debacle, the Vatican sell-out to Communist China, pick your disaster.
As this Pope’s penchant for “making a mess” shows no sign of diminishing to the peril of countless souls, we agree with Chris Ferrara’s assessment over at
The Remnant, and his call (like Bishop Gracida’s) for an imperfect synod to defend the Church from Francis:
a kind of emergency family intervention to stop the violence of an abusive father.
But having noted earlier controversies, we maintain that
the worst dimension of this pontificatus horribilis has been a certain revisionist approach to divine worship, now set to display itself in liturgical spades at the conclusion of the Youth Synod currently underway in Rome.
Many have decried Francis’s liturgical offenses over the years:
- offering Masses with giant puppets, balloons, and tango dancing in the sanctuary;
- not genuflecting before the Blessed Sacrament;
- withholding the Papal Blessing at audiences, but publicly blessing psychotropic herbs for pagan rituals;
- displaying profane items like beach balls on high altars;
- employing sacred vessels, furnishings, and vestments of novel design or illicit material; and
- a lengthy record of
communicatio in sacris that has united this Pope in worship with – and even bestowed formal “blessings” from - heretics, schismatics, Muslims, Jews, and witch doctors.
Would that all of it were fake news.
Still, these past deviations pale in comparison to what’s coming.
After wielding what appears for all the world to be a Wiccan stang at the opening Mass of the Synod,
the Pope has announced that he will celebrate a new form of Mass at its conclusion: a liturgy that priests, bishops, cardinals and theologians are denouncing as barely recognizable as a Catholic rite. [Even if this was meant for dramatic emphasis, it is dishonest journalism since there was no such announcement about 'a new form of Mass'. But as we shall see, the blogger's thesis is that the Novus Ordo is so undisciplined in its free formlessness that every performance of it could potentially be a 'new form of Mass'.]
This is really bad. Earlier this summer, one of Pope Francis’s advisors elicited justifiably strong reactions after affirming that
this Pope “breaks Catholic traditions whenever he wants,” welcoming the same as a “new phase” of Church history in which the faithful are no longer to follow Christ per the dictates of Scripture and Tradition, but are rather to be “ruled by an individual” without any moorings at all.[1]
Certainly far from Catholic, one could hardly call this diagnosis inaccurate. A number of commentators (Catholic and otherwise) have already shown that Francis’s ongoing overthrow of traditional doctrine and discipline bear marked similarities to the autocratic machinations of organized crime lords and socialist dictators of the past; but
none of his earlier departures from Sacred Tradition are as staggering as this coming celebration of a new form of Mass, representing a radical break with all prior liturgical forms in the Roman Rite.[2]
[Very dishonest and misleading as 1) there was no announcement at all, and 2) the 'new form of Mass' referred to is the Novus Ordo!]
The Pope announced it as a “liturgical innovation,” a “change in a venerable tradition” that “affects our hereditary religious patrimony, which seemed to enjoy the privilege of being untouchable and settled” – calling this a “special and historical occasion” and insisting that “we should not let ourselves be surprised by the nature, or even the nuisance, [?!] of its exterior forms.” [In the first of his many tacit time shifts, the blogger does not say that these words were said by Paul VI 50 years ago when he launched his new Mass.]
From the same announcement:
“We must prepare for this many-sided inconvenience. It is the kind of upset caused by every novelty that breaks in on our habits. We shall notice that pious persons are disturbed most, because they have their own respectable way of hearing Mass, and they will feel shaken out of their usual thoughts and obliged to follow those of others. Even priests may feel some annoyance in this respect. […] This novelty is no small thing.”[3]
Read the Pope’s words again. Tradition? Forget it. Piety? Over and done. Friends, this is a plain announcement from the See of Peter that the sacred rites, once entrusted by Jesus Christ to his Apostles for the offering of eternal mysteries, are no longer binding or relevant.
This is a declaration of liturgical revolution. Considering those involved in the making, it could hardly be otherwise. [The blogger continues to give the impression that this 'announcement' was recent, as in a few days or a few weeks ago, and that it was made by Bergoglio.]
Earlier this summer, many scoffed when Cardinal Gerhard Müller (former Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith) denounced a “blatant process of Protestantizing” he was observing in the Catholic hierarchy, with bishops who “justify their infidelity to the Catholic faith with allegedly pastoral concern[.]”[4]
Now scoffers can do little more than ignore this clear and public demonstration of the same:
that a mysterious committee (apparently even Cardinals had no idea who comprised the group) of sundry “liturgical experts” has worked long in closed-door sessions, at the Pope’s behest, to draft a new rite of Mass with direct input from Protestant pastors in the process.[5]
[Carrying on the 'deception' farther ,because the blogger is still talking of Paul VI here, despite quoting from a very contemporary Gerhard Mueller in the preceding paragraph. His remarks in the next two paragraphs are generic comments that apply to any fabricated 'new rite of Mass' whether it was Paul VI's Novus Ordo or any of the infinite abusive versions improvised on it every day.]
It already verges on incredible that any Catholic hierarch would have the gall to fabricate a new rite of Mass to suit their contemporary taste (ignoring the anathemas pronounced by the Council of Trent on such ventures!), but to find that formal heretics were invited to contribute to this rupturing of the most venerable liturgical tradition in the world simply beggars belief.
Men who routinely violate the divine rights of the Church, reject any number of her Sacraments, contemn Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, and deny the various dogmas enshrined in the Catholic Mass are invited to help with the impious creation of a new one? Can any devout Catholic fail to be offended by such grievously irreverent treatment of the sacred?
[Then the blogger switches back to his 'Paul VI' mode without mentioning 'the pope's' name but we know it is Paul VI because the source cited is the French philosoper-theologian Jean Guitton who died in 1999 who was close to Paul VI, and with whom Jorge Bergoglio has no known association.]
We even find in a French interview with Mr. Jean Guitton,
the Pope’s personal friend and confidant, an (accidental?) admission that changing the Catholic Mass to be as amenable as possible to non-Catholics was one of
the Pope’s chief aims:
“The intention of [the] Pope… with regard to what is commonly called the Mass, was to reform the Catholic liturgy in such a way that it should almost coincide with the Protestant liturgy… to get as close as possible to the Protestant Lord’s Supper… [in] an ecumenical intention to remove, or at least to correct, or to relax, what was too Catholic, in the traditional sense, in the Mass and, I repeat, to get the Catholic Mass closer to the Calvinist Mass [sic].”[6]
So there’s that.
[And 'that' happens to be an assertion that I had never read before! That it comes from Guitton no less makes it doubly outrageous. Was this not among the statements scrutinized by the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood in examining the cause for Paul VI?]
As if Guitton’s admission weren’t troubling enough, one now finds that the Italian Archbishop selected by the Pope
[still referring to Paul VI] to midwife this unholy aberration confirmed the same operating principle:
“Help[ing] in any way the road to union of the separated brethren, by removing every stone that could even remotely constitute an obstacle or difficulty” in the liturgy.[7] This monsignor even describes the lamentable result as
“a major conquest of the Catholic Church.”[8]
Even the humblest layperson can detect how this Protestantization has been achieved, simply by reading the text of the new rite side-by-side with the old.
One finds that the Catholic Mass has been stripped of prayers expressing Catholic doctrine, with roughly 80% of the original content being deleted entirely or significantly altered in this new, intentionally less Catholic rite[9] – and seeing as the Pope’s introductory Instruction itself expresses heretical Eucharistic doctrine[10], it’s debatable whether this form of worship can even be called “Catholic” in any meaningful sense. [The Novus Ordo Mass may be a radically stripped down Protestantized version of the Mass but alas, its validity as a Catholic rite has never been contested, even by its most clear-eyed critics like Joseph Ratzinger who had no choice himself but to use it.]
Indeed, the Protestant theologian Max Thurian looks like one of the first to confirm such misgivings (as many
feared after last year’s reports of an “ecumenical Mass” in the works))
[In this parethetical, the writer references the present, although from his footnotes, he is quoting in this paragraph from comments on the Novus Ordo around the time it was launched]: “It is now theologically possible for Protestants to use the same Mass as Catholics.“[11] At the same time, Catholic priests the world over are heard giving dramatic declamations like:
“At this critical juncture, the traditional Roman rite, more than one thousand years old, has been destroyed,”[12] and in the words of one Jesuit (naturally) advisor to the committee of liturgical destroyers:
“Not only the words, the melodies, and some of the gestures are different. To tell the truth, it is a different liturgy of the Mass. This needs to be said without ambiguity: the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed.”[13]
Where are the Cardinals??? Are there any Catholics, any men left among them to rescue the sacred rites? [I am sure these questions were asked in 1969-1970, but obviously, no one was in any juridical or canonical position to contest the validity of the Novus Ordo, so it never was contested. Otherwise, the blogger would not be writing these things now!
It will always be one of the greatest papal paradoxes that the same pope who wrote Humanae Vitae in 1968 should then trample down on the liturgy of the ages a couple of years later. For this reason, a helpless shrug is the most charitable reaction I can generate to Paul VI's canonization.]
To be fair, some
have raised an alarm on this liturgical overthrow – although limiting themselves to publishing said “concerns” in roundabout ways, and without taking any concrete steps to stop this shipwreck. One wonders how bad it will need to get before one of them decides to “resist Cephas to the face.” (cf. Gal 2:11)
[The blogger reverts here to the historical past, on or around the time the Novus Ordo was launched, but for grammatical consistency, the verb should be 'raised' (simple past tense), not 'have raised', because although critics of the NO are still outraged over the 'liturgical overthrow', it is well past the time to 'raise the alarm' over a fait accompli that will soon mark its 50th anniversary. If Bergoglio chooses to formally tamper with the NO to transform it into his desired 'ecumenical mass', then what can opponents do other than stay with the traditional Mass as those who opposed the NO from the beginning have done, and for new opponents, to 'discover' the traditional Mass finally? At least, Benedict XVI provided everyone with this alternative. Of course, Bergoglio or his heirs may well choose to ban it altogether by invalidating Summorum Pontificum - a brazen but totally probable move, given their anti-Catholicism. Then we 'traddies' will have to seek out priests who can will say the Mass of the ages in whatever contemporary equivalent we can find of the catacombs.]
The blogger continues about the historical past:
Still, one can be encouraged by the efforts of two Cardinals in the sees of Berrhoea and Colonia in Cappadocia
[a Biblical region in what is now Turkey], who apparently got advance notice of this impending liturgical madness, sought to intervene privately with the Pope, and then published their theological critique of the bogus new rite (now available in English, see note #14 below).
Their conclusions are devastating. To take one excerpt:
“[The new liturgy] represents, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass…
- The new form of Mass was substantially rejected by the Episcopal Synod, was never submitted to the collegial judgement of the Episcopal Conferences and was never asked for by the people. It has every possibility of satisfying the most modernist of Protestants…
- To abandon a liturgical tradition which for four centuries stood as a sign and pledge of unity in worship, and to replace it with another liturgy which, due to the countless liberties it implicitly authorizes, cannot but be a sign of division.
A liturgy which teems with insinuations or manifest errors against the integrity of the Catholic Faith is, we feel bound in conscience to proclaim, an incalculable error.”[14]
The Pope
[PAUL VI] was clearly prepared for such rejection of this rite by faithful Catholics, as can be read in the very text of his announcement:
“[The new rite] has been thought out by authoritative experts of sacred Liturgy; it has been discussed and meditated upon for a long time. We shall do well to accept it with joyful interest and put it into practice punctually, unanimously and carefully. …So do not let us talk about ‘the new Mass.’ Let us rather speak of the ‘new epoch’ in the Church’s life.”[15]
Let’s try putting that in layman’s terms: “This is happening. Sit down and shut up. Hail the Revolution.”
Now, if you aren’t already nodding your head with sad recognition and understanding, you may want to brace yourself: for although accurate,
some of the news items above aren’t exactly recent. [Which a careful reader would have noticed early on, simply by checking the dates in the blogger's own footnotes. Maybe the blogger thinks he has been very clever about this exposition but it is a poor rhetorical exercise that not only fails but it also errs by deliberate misdirection and confusion.]
And the ff was the whole point of this exercise:
The New Mass that Pope Francis will celebrate at the end of the Youth Synod this month was created fifty years ago. It was crafted and imposed on the Church by one of his predecessors – that hapless innovator he now claims to have “canonized,” Pope Paul VI: a man whose sanctity is far from certain, still farther from exemplary (and about as “miraculous” as an inaccurate medical diagnosis), and at whose feet must be laid (among other things) the single greatest catastrophe in Church history: the near-total replacement of the Roman Rite of Mass with a novel, modernist construct – an attempted abortion of liturgical tradition.
If you were born after 1965, Paul VI’s impious New Mass – the Novus Ordo Missae – is likely the only rite for the offering of the Holy Sacrifice that you have ever known. It’s just as likely you were never told its true history (although much of this is now public record one might explore), so you can be forgiven for not walking out of it years ago.
The important thing is to walk out now. Otherwise,
why be alarmed by the deviations of the current pontificate, or any yet to come? Ecclesiastical innovators have already dared to touch our most precious heritage, seeking to supplant it with a fabrication that even then-Cardinal Ratzinger referred to as a “banal, on-the-spot product”.[16]
One thinks of the observation made by St. Vincent of Lerins on the mad abandonment of Tradition in his own day:
“Such is the insanity of some men, such the impiety of their blinded understanding, such, finally, their lust after error, that they will not be content with the rule of faith delivered once and for all from antiquity, but must daily seek after something new, and even newer still, and are always longing to add something to religion, or to change it, or to subtract from it!”[17]
Happily, no Roman Catholic in good standing needs special permission to return to our true and traditional rites, whether to offer them as a priest or to attend them as a member of the faithful. Still more joyous is the fact that these are increasingly available as the exodus from SquishyChurch continues apace.
In fifty years, we have little doubt that the “Traditional Latin Mass” (TLM) will once again be our dominant (if not exclusive, please God) liturgical practice across the globe. Indeed, this trend is already observable.
[Way too optimistic and far from realistic! But, hey, from your lips to God's ears!]
Furthermore, various bishops, priests, and theologians claim that in the Roman rite,
the TLM alone comprises an act of worship pleasing to God, and we have yet to find a cohesive argument to the contrary. [The best and only argument is that after Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI used the NO exclusively in public as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in the full sense - as an act of worship, thanksgiving, reparation and supplication to God - celebrating Mass with the same intentions and attitude as they would if they had continued to use the traditional Mass. Who will say that all the millions of NO Masses offered in the past 50 years were all not pleasing to God???]
The question is: What’s keeping you from right worship?
“True piety admits no other rule than that whatsoever things have been faithfully received from our fathers the same are to be faithfully consigned to our children; and that it is our duty, not to lead religion whither we would, but rather to follow religion whither it leads.”[18]
PRIESTS: If you still offer the Novus Ordo, it’s time to stop. [Easy to say but highly impractical and unrealistic. Even assuming a priest responds positively, he cannot just stop saying the NO and replace it with the TLM - maybe for himself, assuming he learns the TLM - but he cannot do it arbitrarily for his congregation. His parish priest and his bishop - and the congregation itself - have a say in this. And he will still be obliged to say the Masses he is assigned to celebrate and do so using the NO.]
The wind is changing. Return your flocks to the objective liturgical tradition of the Church; render to God the worship owed to Him, and render to the faithful what is theirs by right: that timeless treasury of ars celebrandi and the countless graces of our priceless heritage in the traditional Mass. If you don’t know it, learn it. Start today.
We know you may suffer for this, but the faithful remaining through the growing darkness are prepared to help you. And remember: you signed up for the Cross.
You’re a priest. Your principle task is to render worthy sacrifice unto God. Regarding the
cura animarum, right worship still remains the most significant of your duties towards the faithful; before parish programs, enrollment goals, and all else.
If God’s children go hungry, deprived of that supernatural nourishment granted by a Mass grown organically over centuries of faithful devotion, it will be because you chose to feed them with a modernist construct designed by the faithless. Are you prepared to render an account for such withholding from God and His people?
LAITY: If you still belong to a Novus Ordo parish, it’s time to leave.
[Not that easy - especially if there is no church offering the TLM where you live. I'm lucky I live only a 15-minute subway ride from Holy Innocents. In some places, traddies have to drive miles to the nearest church where they can hear a TLM Mass. What with Mass schedules and all, this is not always very practical even for those willing to make the sacrifice. Meanwhile, in order not to sin by failing to go to Sunday Mass, what choice do they have but to attend the Mass that is available where they are at the time they are able to go to Mass? Sure, an NO Mass can be an ordeal that is so bad it spoils the whole Mass experience for you, but that's an additional trial to bear and offer to God, even as one tries to make the most one can, spiritually, out of an NO Mass. ]
Even apart from the growing likelihood of total infrastructural collapse, you also bear the first duty of rendering God that worship befitting His glory, that which He has crafted in the Church over centuries: the Traditional Latin Mass. Don’t wait for friends and family to understand, or for your pastor to come around – until diocesan priests are ready to refuse to offend God’s glory any longer (braving the “St. Luke’s treatment” if they must),
relocation is your path. [Once again, a very fanciful suggestion. As if it were easy for anyone to relocate, even individually, let alone with your whole family.]K Let the dead bury their dead; as for you and your house, serve ye the Lord.
Find an FSSP or ICKSP or other TLM community, and get over there. Change jobs, pack up and move if you have to (like plenty of other families are doing, particularly those with kids to raise), and behold the days of the 4th century relived; wherein the lay faithful groaned to see the majority of their bishops embrace heresy and give their churches over to erroneous rites. What did the layfolk do in those days? They left, clinging to the few faithful priests they could find, recognizing that nothing was more important than worship in Spirit and Truth. St. Basil the Great said of them:
“Matters have come to this pass: the people have left their houses of prayer, and now assemble in the deserts – a pitiable sight; women and children, old men, and men otherwise infirm, wretchedly faring in the open air, amid the most profuse rains and snow-storms and winds and frosts of winter; and again in summer under a scorching sun. To all this they submit, because they will have no part in the wicked Arian leaven.” (Letter 242)
[Back then, affected communities probably numbered at best in the hundreds - of whom how many families actually lived 'sine dominica non possomus' to the letter???]
Now it’s our turn. What are we prepared to do?
Nothing supersedes man’s duty to render God that worship proper to His Majesty, and the Novus Ordo just ain’t it.
Rooting ourselves in communities that exclusively offer the traditional rites is essential for achieving this end; and once we have done so, it will be necessary to dig in and hold on, with a weather eye to the horizon.
Because in point of fact, nobody has ever been to the Novus Ordo – we’ve only ever seen iterations of it.
This inherently malleable rite has no enduring essential form. It has no prior tradition to pass on. It has no yesterday in the devotion of centuries, but only a limitless variety of novel tomorrows.
Wicked tomorrows. Do you see it yet?
Having been orchestrated to reflect the personal taste of the celebrant and local surround like an endless mirror-hall, amid a resurgent paganism in wider society the Novus Ordo must allow for increasingly evil iterations. Worse is yet to come, and we think very soon. Run far. Run fast.
Our Lady of Victory, Destroyer of Heresies, pray for us!
Notes:
[1] For this startling admission, see here.
www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/08/14/vatican-advisor-pope-breaks-catholic-traditions-whenever-h...
[2] Space does not permit a thorough demonstration of the radical rupture represented by this new liturgical rite. More studies on this point will soon be forthcoming around the world, but the two Cardinals’ intervention referenced in note #14 below makes for a good start.
[3] Emphasis added. See the full text of the Pope’s address here.
www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/p6691126.htm
Pope Paul VI, that is.
[4] Emphasis added. See Cardinal Müller’s full interview here.
www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/06/26/cdl-muller-we-are-experiencing-conversion-to-the-world-instead-of...
[5] After this little detail was mentioned in papers from the Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano to the Detroit News, another Catholic paper unpacked it here.
[6] As reported in Apropos 12.19.1993 and Christian Order 10.1994.
[7] As declared by Msgr. Bugnini in L’Osservatore Romano 3.19.1965.
[8] Bugnini’s full trumpeting is rather frightening stuff, as reads here:
www.cultodivino.va/content/cultodivino/it/rivista-notitiae/indici-annate/1974...
“The liturgical reform is a major conquest of the Catholic Church, and it has ecumenical dimensions, since the other Churches and Christian denominations see in it not only something to be admired in itself, but equally as a sign of further progress to come.” (p. 126)
[9] See a simple chart comparing the two rites here.
www.whispersofrestoration.com/product-page/resource-liturgical-chan...
Find another liturgical scholar’s quantification of the liturgical change in terms of percentages in the work here.
angelicopress.org/product/noble-beauty-transcendent-h...
[10] That the Pope’s General Instruction was almost immediately retracted and rewritten to try and cover the heretical Eucharistic doctrine it originally expressed (see especially nos. 7 and 48) has done nothing to change the fact that the new rite itself still expresses the same error. See the Cardinals’ critique in #14 below.
[11] Find his comments in La Croix 5.30.1969, as noted by D. Bonneterre at p. 100 here.
archive.org/details/TheLiturgicalMovement/
[12] This is the lamenting assessment of respected Catholic liturgist Fr. Klaus Gamber at p. 99 of The Reform of the Roman Liturgy (Harrison, NY, 1993).
[13] This is the gleeful assessment of the questionable Jesuit Fr. Joseph Gelineau at pp 9-10 of Demain la liturgie (Paris, 1976).
[14] Read (an English translation of) the full letter and theological study of Cardinals Ottaviani, Bacci, and their team of theologians here.
www.ewtn.com/library/curia/reformof.htm
[15] Find the Pope’s attempt to, in his words, “relieve your minds of the first, spontaneous difficulties which this change arouses” here.
www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P6601119.HTM
[16] As penned in his Introduction to La Reforme Liturgique en question (Le-Barroux: Editions Sainte-Madeleine), 1992, pp. 7-8.
[17] From Ch. 21 of St. Vincent of Lerin’s Commonitory, here.
www.newadvent.org/fathers/3506.htm
[18] Ibid., Ch 6
Steve Skojec rationalizes the blogger's rhetorical game - and why 1P5 decided to run the article on their site - in these words:
...It is important to recognize that the trick is not a malicious one. It is not a lie. Everything in the piece is accurate. Factual. Yet it is designed to appear new, to provide the reader an experience of what it would be like to face such an abrupt and arbitrary change to the liturgy – a change most of us don’t remember, because we were either too young or not even born.
The comments on the piece, both here and on social media, have been mixed. Lots of people clearly didn’t read the whole piece, thus missing the reveal. Many of our readers are angry. They feel misled. Some think the piece damages our credibility as a publication. I understand their concerns, because I entertained them before I let the piece run, and I discussed them with our editor. There’s always a certain amount of risk involved when you try something unconventional.
To be quite honest, I agree that people should be angry. I just happen to think their anger is misplaced. The target of their anger should be those who did exactly what the article describes, not those who found a way to present it in a way that penetrates confirmation bias and allows the reader in 2018 to experience a hint of what Catholics around the world were forced to endure in 1969.
The difference between us and the Vatican is that we let our readers in on the gag at the end. The Catholic Church has never woken up from the sick joke that was the liturgical revolt, and many of the faithful left, never to return.
I have been actively engaged in the defense of my faith for 25 years, much of which has been spent online, but as I’ve written about before, I’ve also taught religion classes, led youth groups, and done missionary work for evangelization. No matter what the venue, one area of Catholic discourse that seems to be an interminable quagmire is the debate over liturgy. It’s an argument nobody ever wins. The same arguments and quotes are constantly put on the board. Around and around in circles we go.
Just yesterday, I was accused of being an “elitist” for demonstrating that I believe that the traditional Latin Mass is superior to the Novus Ordo. Dr. Kwasniewski has taken absurd amounts of heat for his recent pieces here and elsewhere demonstrating the dichotomy between pre- and post-conciliar Catholicism, as well as his criticism of the canonization of Pope Paul VI – the very man who perpetrated this crime about which so many people are upset after reading about it and thinking it was happening today. (Many of these same upset people were, ironically, also upset when Pope Paul’s canonization was questioned.)
Trying to get these arguments in front of an audience steeped in the unshakable belief that the argument over liturgy is nothing but a question of personal preference is nearly impossible.
- There are people who won’t even read discussions about pre- and post-conciliar liturgy.
- They won’t look at the many books that have been written.
- They will justify and explain away the imposition of a new rite, the effect on the faithful be damned, and try to portray tradition-loving Catholics as thought-criminals and schismatics.
This has been going on since before I was even born, and I’m about to enter my fifth decade. Something needs to change.
I considered placing an editorial warning at the beginning of the piece, but the entire premise of the exercise is the surprise. There was no way to telegraph the punch and have it connect. I know, because I was subjected to it, too. It didn’t bother me because I appreciate creative approaches to interminable problems.
This particular creative approach will not sit well with everyone, and I understand that. In four years, it’s the first time we’ve ever run something like it, and I don’t see why we ever would again. But we’re in the “redpilling” business here at 1P5, and sometimes we need to mix things up. Same medicine, different delivery method. A thought experiment. A rhetorical exercise designed as one more wake-up call. It’s not going to hurt our feelings if you disagree.
And you know what? The Mass that will be offered at the end of the Youth Synod will be something new. Fifty years is, of course, a blink of an eye in a 2,000-year-old Church with a 1,500-year-old liturgy. But it’s going to be new in another way: the Novus Ordo, by design, is open to infinite variations.
- It is, in essence, a liturgical blank canvas, upon which the celebrant can project whatever he wants.
- Like liturgical snowflakes, no two Novus Ordo Masses are exactly alike. Whether it’s liturgical dancing; laser light shows; clowns and circus performers; heretical homilies; or reverence, incense, and chant, there is no end to the number of permutations that this novel rite permits.
No, there’s not a new, institutional form of the new Mass coming – not that we know of. Not yet. Why formalize the perfectly effective chaos we already have? Things right now are pretty perfect for the liturgical “reformers,” because the Mass has been completely relativized. Everyone gets what he wants…unless he wants unity and Catholicity. If you’re in the market for those, you’re up the creek. But you’re also in the teeny, tiny minority, so you’re not a priority.
To be perfectly honest, I hope that at least some of you – particularly those who have never had any emotional connection to the liturgical debate – felt angry for the first time about someone, even if it’s the pope, changing the Mass. Good. Take that anger and focus it. Learn the differences between the two Masses and why they matter. Then take action. Head toward the best, most worthy liturgy you can find, and never go back.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/10/2018 01:34]